Branko Marcetic, Jacobin: The Next Woodward and Bernstein Could Go to Jail

The all-important lede: "With the Julian Assange indictment, the Trump administration is launching its boldest attack on press freedom yet. And the #Resistance is cheering it on."

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It’s worth taking a moment to consider the absurdity of the situation. Trump, who for years has been accused of being a Russian asset working in concert with Assange and WikiLeaks, prepared and filed secret criminal charges against Assange that are now finally unveiled. Meanwhile, for more than two years, the US media and the anti-Trump “Resistance” have been fretting about Trump attacking press freedoms and holding up the press as the last barrier standing between American democracy and full-blown autocracy, rightly cheering on as journalists obtained confidential, damaging information about the administration from high-level sources within the government. Now some prominent members of both groups are actually cheering as Trump prepares to try and criminalize the practice of journalism.

Some of the support for Assange’s arrest stems from confusion over what he’s being charged with. As the US indictment makes clear, this has nothing to do with the sexual assault accusations Assange faced in Sweden, which were dropped in 2017. (Assange was not found innocent of the charges.) Nor is it connected to Assange’s release of hacked emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign during 2016, which would be protected by the First Amendment. This indictment is entirely over the 2010 release of documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, for which she was imprisoned and tortured, and now imprisoned again. It’s here that the threat to press freedoms lie.

Correct. Read the whole thing.